NEW YORK -- Intel wants to bring its microprocessing muscle and Moore's Law to the smart grid, an executive said yesterday.

Speaking yesterday at the 9th annual Jefferies Global Clean Technology Conference in New York, the company's general manager for eco-technology, Lorie Wigle, said the company best known for its computer chips is actually a top 5 player in the smart grid.

Wigle highlighted the company's Open Energy Initiative, which consists of four pillars: grid infrastructure, home energy management, smart (commercial) buildings and microgrids and communities.

Intel is internally aligning itself to achieve these goals, Wigle said, and is walking the talk by not only consuming green energy -- Wigle said Intel is the No. 1 buyer of green energy, three years running -- but by providing products for businesses and individuals.

That includes products such as wind turbines. Wigle said the average utility wind turbine contains up to 16 microprocessors, used for management and smart grid communication. There's a growing opportunity for Intel in that space, she said.

Wigle also mentioned the 70 NIST standards, and stressed that Intel didn't want to develop all-new processes if it wasn't necessary.

"We do not want to reinvent things that are 90 percent there. We'd prefer to capitalize on prior investment," she said, adding that Intel would like to use the IPv6 protocol "everywhere we can."

Wigle also highlighted grid modeling and simulation, which Intel sees as a major opportunity for its computational power.

"Complete grid simulation is probably an access-scale computing problem," she said, noting that such a computer requires more than 200 times the computing power as high-performance PCs on the market today.

Wigle also discussed the consumer play.

"We believe smart buildings are critical," she said, noting that some 70 percent of energy use derives from them. "We can take our data center knowledge and apply it to communities."

To be engaged, consumers must be able to have a measure of control -- and that doesn't necessarily require a smart meter, she said.

Consumer participation could come from the use of home energy management tools, which may not come in the form of a dedicated panel on the wall. For instance, televisions might be the next logical step, Wigle said, highlighting the company's partnership with Tendril to put energy-management widgets on televisions.

Finally, Wigle highlighted the company's recent plays in the energy space. Intel has invested $125 million to date in smart grid startups, and has participated in policy-making through DESC, the GridWise Alliance, ACEEE, The Climate Group and the USTDA.

Andrew Nusca is a former writer-editor for ZDNet and contributor to CNET. He is also the former editor of SmartPlanet, ZDNet's sister site about innovation. He writes about business, technology and design now but used to cover finance, fashion and culture. He was an intern at Money, Men's Vogue, Popular Mechanics and the New York Daily Ne...
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